The
connection between women's human rights,
gender equality, socioeconomic development
and peace is increasingly apparent.
--
Mahnaz Afkhami
Women's
empowerment is intertwined with respect
for human rights.
--
Mahnaz Afkhami
In
the future, human rights will be increasingly
a universal criterion for designing ethical
systems.
--
Mahnaz Afkhami
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The
right to development is the measure of the
respect of all other human rights.That should
be our aim: a situation in which all individuals
are enabled to maximize their potential, and
to contribute to the evolution of society
as a whole.
-- Kofi
Annan, United Nations Secretary-General
It
was never the people who complained of the
universality of human rights, nor did the
people consider human rights as a Western
or Northern imposition. It was often their
leaders who did so. -- Kofi
Annan, United Nations Secretary-General
|
"Human
rights education is much more than a lesson in schools
or a theme for a day; it is a process to equip people
with the tools they need to live lives of security
and dignity. On this International Human Rights Day,
let us continue to work together to develop and nurture
in future generations a culture of human rights, to
promote freedom, security and peace in all nations."
--
Kofi
Annan
The
sad truth is that most evil is done by people
who never make up their minds to be either
good or evil.
-- Hannah
Arendt
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Silence
never won rights. They are not handed
down from above; they are forced by pressures
from below.
-- Roger
Nash Baldwin
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"A
century that began with children having virtually
no rights is ending with children having the
most powerful legal instrument that not only
recognizes but protects their human rights."
-- Carol
Bellamy, UNICEF Executive Director
"The
Convention is not only a visionary document.
We are reminded daily that it is an agreement
that works – and its utility can be seen in
the everyday use to which I have seen it increasingly
being put by country after country, in policy,
in practice and in law." -- Carol
Bellamy, UNICEF Executive Director, Statement
to the UNICEF Executive Board, September 1998
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"Those
who today still feel a sense of impotence
can do something: they can support Amnesty
International. They can help it to stand up
for freedom and justice."
-- Peter
Benenson
|
"Torture
is banned but in two-thirds of the world's countries
it is still being committed in secret. Too many governments
still allow wrongful imprisonment, murder or "disappearance"
to be carried out by their officials with impunity."
-- Peter
Benenson
"It's
the publicity function of Amnesty that I think has
made its name so widely known, not only to readers
in the world, but to governments - and that's what
matters."
-- Peter
Benenson
"Open
your newspaper - any day of the week - and you will
find a report from somewhere in the world of someone
being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his
opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government."
-- Peter
Benenson
"The
candle burns not for us, but for all those whom we
failed to rescue from prison, who were shot on the
way to prison, who were tortured, who were kidnapped,
who "disappeared". That's what the candle is for."
-- Peter
Benenson
"Once
the concentration camps and the hell-holes of the
world were in darkness. Now they are lit by the light
of the Amnesty candle; the candle in barbed wire.
When I first lit the Amnesty candle, I had in mind
the old Chinese proverb: 'Better light a candle than
curse the darkness.'"
-- Peter
Benenson
"I
feel morally and intellectually obliged to simply
conceded that the death penalty experiment has failed....
From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with
the machinery of death."
-- Harry A. Blackmun, Former US Supreme Court Justice
|
It
has long been recognized that an essential
element in protecting human rights was a widespread
knowledge among the population of what their
rights are and how they can be defended.
-- Boutros
Boutros-Ghali, Sixth UN Secretary-General,
1992-1996
The
human rights we are to discuss here at Vienna
are...the quintessential values through which
we affirm together that we are a single human
community.
-- Boutros
Boutros-Ghali, at the World Conferenceon
Human Rights, 14 June 1993
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The
Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to "create"
rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights
to prohibit our Government from infringing rights
and liberties presumed to be preexisting.
-- Justice William J. Brennan
Democracy
is not the law
of the majority but the protection of the minority.
-- Albert Camus
 |
"Everyone
has a right to peaceful coexistence, the basic
personal freedoms, the alleviation of suffering,
and the opportunity to lead a productive life..."
-- Jimmy
Carter
America
did not invent human rights. In a very real
sense, it is the other way around. Human rights
invented America.
-- Jimmy
Carter
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A
right is not what someone gives you; it's what no
one can take from you.
-- Ramsey Clark
If
nations are allowed to commit genocide with impunity,
to hide their guilt in a camouflage of lies and denials,
there is a real danger that other brutal regimes will
be encouraged to attempt genocides.
--Caroline, Baroness Cox, House of Lords
We
discovered that peace at any price is no peace at
all. We discovered that life at any price has no value
whatever; that life is nothing without the privileges,
the prides, the rights,
the joys which make it worth living, and also worth
giving. And we also discovered that there is something
more hideous, more atrocious than war or than death;
and that is to live in fear.
-- Eve Curie, French author
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"Peace
can only last where human rights are respected,
where the people are fed, and where individuals
and nations are free."
-- 14th
Dalai Lama
Human
Beings, indeed all sentient beings, have the
right to pursue happiness and live in peace
and freedom.--
14th
Dalai Lama
|
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"All
human beings, whatever their cultural or historical
background, suffer when they are intimidated, imprisoned
or tortured . . . We must, therefore, insist on a
global consensus, not only on the need to respect
human rights worldwide, but also on the definition
of these rights . . . for it is the inherent nature
of all human beings to yearn for freedom, equality
and dignity, and they have an equal right to achieve
that."
-- 14th
Dalai Lama
|
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"...In
a world riven by inequity, medicine could
be viewed as social justice work." -- Paul
Farmer
“If
access to health care is considered a human
right, who is considered human enough to have
that right?” -- Paul
Farmer
"Clean
water and health care and school and food
and tin roofs and cement floor, all of these
things should constitute a set of basics that
people must have as birthrights." --
Paul
Farmer
|
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"The
UN Declaration of Human Rights laid down what
any person might reasonably expect, yet there
are remarkably few people who enjoy these
rights. With cameras in the hands of activists
and meaningful distribution of those images,
we will witness what really goes on in this
world and hopefully want to change it."
-- Peter
Gabriel
|
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I
understand democracy as something that gives
the weak the same chance as the strong.
-- Mohandas
Gandhi
Truth
resides in every human heart, and one has
to search for it there, and to be guided
by truth as one sees it. But no one has
a right to coerce others to act according
to his own view of truth.
-- Mohandas
Gandhi
|
It
is never easy to define what is moral, particularly
in foreign policy. But at the risk of being simplistic,
it appears to me that a foreign policy that is morally
right protects human rights everywhere.
-- Arthur Joseph Goldberg
I
am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample
underfoot.
-- Horace Greeley
|
'Freedom
from fear' could be said to sum up the whole
philosophy of human rights.
-- Dag
Hammarskjöld
The
Universal Declaration... as a common standard
of achievement for all peoples and all nations...it
not only crystallizes the political thought
of our times on these matters, but it has
also influenced the thinking of legislators
all over the world.
-- Dag
Hammarskjöld, Second UN Secretary-General,
1953-1961
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The
time has arrived in America for the Democratic
Party to get out of the shadows of states'
rights and walk forthrightly into the bright
sunshine of human rights
-- Hubert
Humphrey, 1948
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The
care of human life and happiness, and not
their destruction, is the first and only object
of good government.
-- Thomas
Jefferson
We
hold these truths to be self-evident,--that
all men are created equal; that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights; that among these are Life, Liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. -- Thomas
Jefferson
|
In
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December
1948) in most solemn form, the dignity of a person
is acknowledged to all human beings; and as a consequence
there is proclaimed, as a fundamental right, the right
of free movement in search for truth and in the attainment
of moral good and of justice, and also the right to
a dignified life.
-- Pope John XXIII, 1881-1963 Pacem in Terris, 1963
If
the equality of individuals and the dignity of man
be myths, they are myths to which the republic is
committed.
-- Howard Mumford Jones
|
In
giving rights to others which belong to them,
we give rights to ourselves.
-- John
F. Kennedy
|
 |
"America
now stands as the world's foremost power. We should
be proud: Not since the age of the Romans have one
people achieved such preeminence. But we are not Romans;
we do not seek an empire. We are Americans, trustees
of a vision and a heritage
that commit us to the values of democracy and the
universal cause of human rights."
-- Senator John Kerry (American Senator, b.1943)
|
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"Whatever
career you may choose for yourself - doctor,
lawyer, teacher - let me propose an avocation
to be pursued along with it. Become a dedicated
fighter for civil rights. Make it a central
part of your life. It will make you a better
doctor, a better lawyer, a better teacher. It
will enrich your spirit as nothing else possibly
can. It will give you that rare sense of nobility
that can only spring from love and selflessly
helping your fellow man. Make a career of humanity.
Commit yourself to the noble struggle for human
rights. You will make a greater person of yourself,
a greater nation of your country and a finer
world to live in."
-- Martin
Luther King, Jr. |
|
Whenever
I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel
a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
-- Abraham
Lincoln
|
 |
By
a divine paradox, wherever there is one slave there
are two. So in the wonderful reciprocities of
being, we can never reach the higher levels until
all our fellows ascend with us.
-- Edwin Markham
|
|
The
cost in human lives and suffering is so high
that we all have to work to end violence and
oppression once and for all. We have to proclaim
that every human being is equal, in dignity,
in freedom—and, as the first article of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights states,
we have to live “in a spirit of brotherhood.”
-- Federico
Mayor |
|
We
are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle,
or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected,
not to be victims of intolerance and racism.
-- Rigoberta
Menchu, Guatemala Nobel Peace Prize Winner,
1992
|
 |
An
injustice committed against anyone is a threat to
everyone.
-- Montesquieu
You
are a human being. You have rights inherent
in that reality. You have dignity and worth
that exists prior to law.
-- Lyn Beth Neylon
"First
they came for the Jews and I did not speak out - because
I was not a Jew. Then they came for the communist
and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not
speak out - because I was not a trade unionists. Then
they came for me - and there was no one left to speak
out for me." -Pastor Niemoeler
|
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The
only way to make sure people you agree with
can speak is to support the rights of people
you don't agree with.
-- Eleanor
Holmes Norton
|
And
we who have toiled for freedom's law, have we sought
for freedom's soul?
Have we learned at last that human right is not a
part but the whole?
-- John Boyle O'Reilly
|
Together
we can prevent genocide from happening again.
Together we can make a better future for our
children. -- Dith
Pran
|
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|
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Today's
human rights violations are the causes of
tomorrow's conflicts.
-- Mary
Robinson
|
I
believe we should try to move away from the vocabulary
and attitudes which shape the stereotyping of developed
and developing country approaches to human rights
issues. We are collective custodians of universal
human rights standards, and any sense that we fall
into camps of “accuser” and “accused”
is absolutely corrosive of our joint purposes. The
reality is that no group of countries has any grounds
for complacency about its own human rights performance
and no group of countries does itself justice by automatically
slipping into the “victim” mode..
-- Mary
Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights
"Human
rights are inscribed in the hearts of people; they
were there long before lawmakers drafted their first
proclamation." -- Mary
Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights
"Nations
will rise and fall, but equality remains the ideal.
The universal aim is to achieve respect for the entire
human race, not just for the dominant few."
-- Carlos P. Romulo
Where,
after all, do universal human rights begin? In small
places, close to home - so close and so small that
they cannot be seen on any maps of the world ... Such
are the places where every man, woman and child seeks
equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without
discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there,
they have little meaning anywhere.
-- Eleanor
Roosevelt
|
Basically
we could not have peace, or an atmosphere
in which peace could grow, unless
we recognized the rights of individual human
beings... their importance, their dignity...
and agreed that was the basic thing that had
to be accepted throughout the world.
-- Eleanor
Roosevelt
|
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Freedom
means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.
Our support goes to those who struggle to
gain those rights or keep them.
-- Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, Former US President,
Four Freedoms Speech, 6 January 1941
|
It is often easier to become outraged by injustice
half a world away than by oppression and discrimination
half a block from home.
-- Carl T. Rowan
|
|
Human
rights are not a privilege conferred by government.
They are every human being's entitlement by
virtue of his humanity. The right to life
does not depend, and must not be contingent,
on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a
parent or sovereign. ... You must weep that
your own government, at present, seems blind
to this truth.
-- Mother
Teresa
|
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I
am not interested
in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown
from the table of someone who considers himself
my master. I want the full menu of rights.
-- Bishop
Desmond Tutu
|
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|
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The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights - This
great and inspiring instrument was born of
an increased sense of responsibility by the
international community for the promotion
and protection of man’s basic rights and freedoms.
The world has come to a clear realization
of the fact that freedom, justice and world
peace can only be assured through the international
promotion and protection of these rights and
freedoms.
-- U
Thant, Third United Nations Secretary-General,
1961-1971
|
Of
equality - As if it harm'd me, giving others the same
chances and rights as myself - As if it were not indispensable
to my own rights that others possess the same.
-- Walt Whitman
|
"Chinese
and Tibetan dissidents are either locked up
in prison, forced into hiding, or silenced
by fear of police retaliation against their
families. All the happiness about China's
economic growth has made many Americans forget
that police clubs and guns and the Laogai
system keep the Communist Party in power.
Moreover, it is still little recognized how
American resources help to sustain that power
through trade, investments, and the transfer
of technology... It is only when the Laogai
is abolished in China that real change will
come about."
-- Harry
Wu
|
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"...we
should not give up and say that the situation
is hopeless. There is still our conscience,
there is still the memory of the victims of
this war, there is still our duty to try and
prevent further bloodshed. We have to prosecute
all the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes
against humanity."
-- Lida
Yusupova
"...civil
society has not lost the possibility to influence
the government and force them to change their
policy. That is why we believe in your voice
and your help." -- Lida
Yusupova
|
I
love life and want to hold onto it. But my passion
for justice for my tormented people, for their dignity
and freedom, must be greater still. For of what value
is a life of slavery, of humiliation and
contempt for that which you hold most dear: Your identity!
I will therefore not give in to the Turkish Inquisition.
-- Leyla Zana
See
also CIVIL RIGHTS Quotes
www.HumanRightsDay.us
www.CivilRightsDay.com
